When Panamanian salsa singer Rub?n Blades married Lisa Lebenzon, an Anglo (a white American not of Spanish descent) non-Spanish speaker, he asked her to learn Spanish so he could speak his native language at home. She finished in only seven months a Spanish course that normally took three years.

Dr. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, kept a strictly kosher diet. While in Paris, he and a group of rabbis ate only in kosher restaurants. On leaving Paris, Dr. Finkelstein joked, "I can't understand all this fuss people make about French cooking. We have the same things at home."

A Sufi teacher spoke about the virtue of patience. As he spoke, a scorpion stung his foot repeatedly. His followers eventually noticed the scorpion and asked the teacher why he had not moved his foot away from it. The teacher replied, "I was discussing the virtue of patience. I could hardly have spoken about patience without also setting an example of patience. I would have been ashamed before God."